Tim Bray reminds us that these numbers are ONLY for people who subscribed to the feeds in Google Reader. On his server he has 1,455 subscribers for his RSS, 4,403 for his atom feed, while Google Reader reported 3,690 for his feeds.

I’d love to know how many subscribers you have. Can you look your numbers up and put them in a comment? Remember to add up all the various feeds you have (that’s how I got these numbers above).

Enjoy!

The next step? What are you learning here? For one the BBC is one of the only sites that puts “about News Feeds” next to all of its feed icons (they link to a well done page about how to use News Feeds). Any wonder why they get so many subscribers?

UPDATE: Fred Oliveira says that Feed Burner is reporting to him that he has 2,445 subscribers from Google Reader but Google Reader says that Fred only has 524 subscribers from Google Reader. So, these numbers may be WAY off. But they are the data I had to work with. Would love to hear your stories. Tim Bray says he’s seeing a discrepancy too.

UPDATE #2: I might have missed some of your numbers. I tried to find them all, but please correct what you find if you find some that I missed.

Now, imagine a world where every video is forced to get a transcript so that it’s accessible to deaf people? Yeah, some sites like mine would just pay to have transcripts done. But most video bloggers can’t afford that. So who would pay for this?

I couldn’t afford to do it for my Kyte.tv channel, for instance. So if there was a law that said that all videos needed to have transcripts so they were accessible I’d be forced to stop doing video.

I guess if such a law were enforced then we’d need a technology solution that would automatically add transcripts to our videos.

Someone asked why I keep pointing out the 5,000 friends limit. Why? Because I still haven’t gotten through and I’m still getting pushback from the lobby. So, let’s try one more time.

First, a “friend” in Facebook is NOT a “real friend.” (Let’s define “real friend” for now as someone who you’d invite over to your house for dinner). In social networking software a “friend” is someone you want in your social network. Period. Nothing more. The fact that people assume that you should only have “real friends” in your social network is just plain wrong. Do you only hand out business cards to “real friends?” In your contact list in Outlook or Gmail do you only have “real friends?” In your phone book do you only have “real friends?” I don’t. I have some people that I talk with all the time on my phone who I’ve never even met. Heck, I remember meeting Donncha O’Caoimh in Cork, Ireland and he kept asking me about what Matt Mullenweg was like. I thought that was funny because Donncha worked for Matt yet had never met him up to that point (Matt is the founder of Automattic, which is the company that makes the blog service Im using here).

Second, Facebook is NOT just a social networking tool. So, any limitation it has limits all the other functions. We’ll go into those in a second.

Third, Facebook’s engineers tell me that the 5,000 friend limit is there because their engines have scaling problems. In fact, I’ve noticed parts of Facebook slowed down for me at about 3,000 friends. Also lots of stuff broke and didn’t work for me (videos, for instance, didn’t work until just recently for me).

Fourth, it +is+ possible to get thousands of names in your contact list. My friend, Buzz Bruggeman, isn’t “famous” yet has 12,000 names in his Outlook contact list. He used to be a lawyer, now is CEO of ActiveWords, and is one of the world’s best networkers. Imagine you tell him he can’t put more than 5,000 names into his contact list.

Fifth, just because YOU don’t use a system in a hard-core way doesn’t mean that it should be designed for YOU. Imagine a pro camera being designed for someone who only takes pictures three times a year (which is pretty average behavior, actually). Facebook claims they are a “social utility.” Yet there are walls that it has that limit that utility for many users. Facebook employees tell me there are thousands of people who have gotten to 5,000 contacts so I’m not alone.

So, why does this matter?

Well, because inside Facebook is a competitor for these three sites:

1. Flickr. Facebook has its own photo sharing system.
2. Upcoming. Facebook has its own event sharing system.
3. YouTube. Facebook has its own video sharing system.

So, imagine that Flickr only let 5,000 people see your photos? Or that YouTube only let 5,000 watch your videos? Wouldn’t you be pissed? Wouldn’t there be massive protests?

Absolutely. Yet we accept this crappy software engineering because of the “you-don’t-need-more-friends” lobby.

It’s really great hanging out with people who you don’t really know. Last night I hung out with my neighbors and met many of them for the first time (we had a block party). Most of the people in my neighborhood are older. In their 60s and 70s. One of my neighbors is a “drug dealer.” His words, not mine. Works in the pharma industry and has visited 102 countries. Fascinating guy.

But it was interesting trying to explain what I do. “I have an Internet video show.” No, not a porn show. Heh!

Some of my neighbors couldn’t quite rap their heads around the fact that I could send video of them around the world from my cell phone. They had heard of Facebook or MySpace but I had to explain over and over how Kyte worked. They acted like they had met someone from the future.

I shouldn’t make all my neighbors sound like Luddites. They are very educated and well traveled people who’ve done interesting things with their lives but it’s interesting to see just how far ahead those of us who live in the tech echo chamber are. One common thing? They all have heard about Facebook and are wondering what they’d do on it. It really pisses me off I can’t add them to Facebook. So, I told them to sign up for Twitter instead and I’d answer their questions there.